A gunman opened fire in Dawson college today in Montreal, down the road from my place of work. As we madly dashed to fix the last of the bugs on our game, we heard the sirens rushing to the site of the shootings down the road.

Despite this, the events seemed unreal, perhaps because we got our updates from the Web, which fails to distinguish down the road from the Middle East. It all seemed like something that had happened strictly on the news, until I came out of work at 8 PM to a rainy night and decided to take the underground home. You could feel what had happened in the air, the commuters quiet, subdued and sad. Not Montreal.

I grew up here, thinking of the city as my own Tattooine, the backwater I needed to escape in favor of more exotic destinations. At 27 I finally moved to Sweden, and there I realized what a Montrealer I was. I listened to CHOM and read the Mirror over the net, and hung out mostly with fellow French Canadians. I moved back after a year and discovered a city I’d never really known. After spending the summer watching an out-of-towner discover Montreal, I’ve myself fallen for the city more than ever.

I’m sure there is a positive light in which to see this. I’m sure the city will prove resilient. But tonight, the fact that something like that would happen in my beloved home is shocking, sad, and it pisses me off. I don’t want this here.